Part of the job of a botanist is knowing how to keep a secret. Bearing witness to aching loss makes it easy to keep mum about locations of sensitive species. This is especially true of the exquisite pink lady’s slipper.
This terrestrial orchid favors forests in the eastern United States with intact understories and acidic soils rich with mycorrhizal fungi. A garden flunkie, it much prefers the woods, especially under coniferous trees. If you were to see this vividly hued flower, which is in bloom now, it would take your breath away. But I won’t be the one to tell you where to find it.
For thousands of years, pink lady’s slipper has thrived throughout its range, which includes New York City. But its exacting habitat requirements leave it vulnerable to urbanization. With only three known populations left on Staten Island, this orchid’s future here is precarious.
New York City has dozens of wildflower species that are similarly imperiled. When a plant’s presence is reduced to a handful of places and times, threats to its survival abound. Some beautiful specimens are stolen, dug out of parks and replanted in home gardens, where they promptly die. Others are unceremoniously buried under a baseball field, or ripped out by tires of mountain bikes and ATVs, or eaten by deer, which roam a now predator-free landscape.
With no legal protections, these seemingly small setbacks have devastating consequences for wildflowers and the natural systems that depend on them.
Scientists tell us we are living in an age of extinction. Planetary loss of biological diversity is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Around the world, nature is being destroyed at an alarming rate. Human activity has led to destabilized ecosystems, damaged habitats, disrupted ocean life, exploited wild plant and animal species, and polluted air, land and water.
To address this crisis globally, the United Nations formed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992. This multinational treaty to save biodiversity included all 195 U.N. members, with the sole exception of the United States.
The absence of the U.S. from this agreement has undermined conservation efforts both at home and abroad. For nearly 30 years, the world’s richest country has never paid CBD dues, hosted conferences or engaged with other world leaders. This has kept the rapid loss of biological diversity off the national agenda, resulting in less funding for research, less media coverage and fewer scientists studying the problem. In the meantime, the extinctions have stealthily kept apace.
Mirroring the global extinction crisis, New York City has a biodiversity problem of its own. Its native flora is in steep decline. Of 1,357 native plants ever recorded here, little more than half remain. In Manhattan and Brooklyn, exotic plants outnumber native species. Since 1990, Staten Island, the most bucolic borough, has lost more than 30% of its indigenous vegetation to bulldozers and other threats. The coming addition of Fresh Kills Park will mimic a natural landscape but does not replace the wild, unplanted nature that grew there for millennia. Once gone, it is irreplaceable.
Sadly, pink lady’s slipper, isolated and fragmented, is not alone. And while local loss is not the same as global extinction, this is how it starts: right under your nose. With fewer pieces of biodiversity in place, systems begin to unravel. A wetland’s capacity to retain water is reduced, so a neighborhood floods every time it rains. A lack of wildflowers starves bees, resulting in decreased pollination of food crops. When street trees are cut down, asthma rates go up. The burdens of losing pieces of nature are disproportionately carried by historically marginalized communities. To ignore the true value of natural capital comes at too high a cost for people and all of our wildlife neighbors.
In October, countries from around the world will commit to the CBD’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework. The result will be an international pact to fight the global extinction crisis, equivalent in scale and stature to the Paris climate accord. But this time New York City is calling on the federal government to commit to its success.
This spring, Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal introduced a resolution that calls on the United States Senate to ratify, and President Biden to sign, this UN convention. She recognizes that biological diversity is essential to the well-being of New Yorkers and of the planet.
Additionally, New York City needs an ambitious ecological agenda to save native species, provide nature access, and value ecosystem services. Climate policy should center on local wetlands. Natural resource considerations must be aligned with environmental justice actions and public health initiatives. The urgency to act is palpable.
To share a piece of this planet with the beguiling pink lady’s slipper is a gift, for which we have shown no gratitude. We owe this orchid so much more.
Anzelone is a botanist in New York City and founder of PopUP Forest.